Using Weebly with multiple writers developers

I have used Weebly for several years to create web sites but always been the only developer. However now a small team of us are going to work together to create a site and we needed a method to share photos that we may use on this site.

I did this by creating a second Weebly site just to act as a photo library, with large, medium and small versions of the photos.  These photos can then be included in the main site by referencing their URL. This video shows how to do this with various browsers.

Although written specifically for the team the method can easily be adopted by other groups.

Nerd flash 

Did you notice seamless switch from Mac to Internet Explorer on XP and back again. I had all browsers set up one behind the other plus IE running in Virtual Box XP machine, QuickTime screencast recorded the XP guest machine just fine. 

Recorded on iMac 21.5", Mountain Lion.

Using Google Viewer to display PDF Files in your Web Site

I have been developing a site that contains several large PDF files. I wanted to have a quality version of the file for downloading and a lower quality for online viewing. The online version is a lower quality so that delay is minimised.
In doing this I discovered a few things.

• You can use Acrobat X to produce reduced size version that will start display the first page without waiting for the whole file to be made ready.
• All the browsers handle this file differently, and some not at all

I am using Weebly to build the site, and the Pro version has a feature to display PDF files using the viewer Scribd. THis is OK but appears to be Adobe Flash based, and it does not work on IOS (iPhone, iPad) platform. Therefore I looked for another approach. I noticed in testing the Google Chrome browser is that it uses its own Google Docs Viewer. This facility can be used in your own web sites.
This is the page being developed within Weebly Pro.

I want the Alternative Viewer called by the ONLINE QUICK button to use the Google viewer.

First you need to upload the PDF to Weebly. To do this I use the standard Weebly features to create a button and link this button to my PDF.

The file I uploaded is named in the File on Your Website. Copy this filename. Publish this site using standard Weebly methods and navigate to the page.

Clicking on the button will open PDF file as shown below (this may look different depending on browser). The online filename is given in the browser navigation box. Copy this name.

You now need to open another tab in your browser and go to docs.google.com/viewer where you paste the address of the PDF in the first box. Click on Generate Link

You should now see the following screen. There are options to embed the code into a HTML page, but the option I use is Paste this link into email or IM: Copy the link.

Return to Weebly development page edit the button so that it now links to the address we copied previously.

Again, using standard Weebly controls publish the site and visit the page. Now when you click on the QUICK ONLINE button you should see the following Google Viewer version of the PDF, which in my case opens in a new tab.

Real Example

If you want to see this in action then please visit The Orange Tree Press site. This company sells high quality greetings cards, mainly of a religious nature.

Google Sites Horizontal Menu means more space

Jury still out to whether to use Google Sites or Weebly for quick web development plus hosting.

Just discovered that I can use horizontal menu when making web pages with Google Sites. Also you can turn off sidebar which means a lot more space can be used by your content. See my Photography site where I have reworked it using the above.

However I do worry that Google Sites is getting harder to find on Google Pages. Currently the only way I can find it is to go to G-Drive and then it appears in the more.. Tab.

DIY Weebly Menu Bar

I am exploring Weebly in fine detail and one of the things I wanted to do was add a link button. Now I know that site navigation is well catered for by Weebly in its templates. However occassionaly I want to have a navigation link button embedded in the article or as an extra menu bar at the end of the page.

To see how I did this visit Web-Dev

 

 

Typing HTML on iPad

 
Unless you are using an iPad HTML development app such as WPD (Web Page Developer) which has enhanced keyboard typing HTML tags on iPad on screen keypad is a pane. Multiple keystrokes just to reveal the < symbol and then after entering say p for paragraph then repeat multiple key strokes to add >. All this to be repeated at the end of paragraph with additional / character!  I then stumbled across a tip for the new IOS 5 operating system that simply solves this and at no cost.

Keyboard Shortcuts  

 

 
1. On iPad go to Settings and select General
   
   
   
2. Select Keyboard and then Shortcuts and add your own  
   
 
3. Return to any program and then when you next type in the keywords you have the standard option of hitting space bar to expand text.
   

 
Note:  Make sure you use an abbreviation that typically will not be used, e.g. htp for <p> and not just p. 
 
To do similar on Mac then I recomend the free App Dash

Create Weebly Web Page by copying Blogger HTML

This morning I blogged about upgrading my MacBook Pro memory using Google Blogger, (see here) which by the way has had a facelift recently.

As an experiment I selected the HTML tab in Blogger, copied the HTML and passed it into a new page in the Computing section of this site, and hey presto one quick and easy, if not brilliantly, web page which you can see by clicking here. designed

Weebly Multi-column

I originally thought the multi-column feature in Weebly was very restricted until I realised that you can vary the size of the columns, and even more useful, you can embed multi column within previous multi-column. This short video illustrates this.